Floq, the survey software company based in Perth, Australia wants to take on existing questionnaire giants and it hopes to do so by offering more in the way of customisation and simplicity.

Getting customer feedback in ways that don’t put people off with long forms or a garish presentation is not always easy. There are plenty of companies that offer a basic service, but Floq is looking to disrupt this field with a focus on design that suits its customers and usability that encourages people to take their surveys.

The service has just gone into public beta and the presentation is admittedly calming and easy to use.

Floq is also trying to open up data from customer surveys to make it more useful to the clients asking questions. Jonah Cacioppe, Co-Founder of Floq says, “The current main difference between Floq and Surveymonkey, Wufoo or Google forms besides not hurting your eyes during usage, is that we have comparative benchmarking. So if a coffee shop grabs some customer feedback questions from the pool they can compare their score to the global or local average. Rather than never see what anyone else gets scored for the very same questions. Weirdly these guys don’t share questions or answers amongst users, so everyone misses out on the benefits of open, anonymised data.”

So, it’s not just useful to ask about your own customer base, but in comparison with more or less successful businesses in a particular sector, specific areas of improvement can be identified.

The data that is gained in the surveys can also be offered up to a marketplace where businesses can profit from the effort they put into their questionnaires. Anyone can build a survey, test or quiz and then share or sell it. The possible scope for use cases are limited only to user imagination. Cacioppe says, “We’re envisaging retired teachers building maths tests they can sell for a few bucks around the world, or sustainability firms creating audits that they sell or share.”

Floq is also looking to find better ways to collect information from customers and encourage people to provide feedback. One of the methods it is exploring is to provide QR codes on till receipts. Though it is thought that we might eventually end up with electronic receipts, the majority of businesses still provide paper slips as proof of purchase and that’s where Floq is stamping its mark.

Customers can read the QR code with a mobile device and provide feedback on the spot. This method is likely to grab people when they are still feeling a particular way about a service. It’s a good time to capture their mood, especially as customers who then leave a premises are less likely to go home and remind themselves to send a review.

Surveying the Aus tech landscape

One of the best ways to prove your service works is to use it and Floq is doing so in order to share data about its home country.

Australia might not come to mind immediately as an international leader in tech development, but that is not to say that there is nothing there to speak of. Floq aims to prove this by mapping the country’s tech world and is using a survey to gather its data.

If there’s a startup in the back of beyond, with an Internet connection, Floq hopes to find them and add to their map of innovation. If you want to add your startup in Oz to the database, there is of course a form you can add details to.

As data becomes a more important currency, services like Floq providing a market for information as well as well presented ways to quiz are a bit like miners. If the company’s methods are disruptive enough, maybe they will start another gold rush down under.